You can take no
credit for beauty at 16. But if you are beautiful at 60, it will be your soul's
own doing.

MARIE STOPES

Whatever poet,
orator, or sage may say of it, old age is still old age.

SINCLAIR LEWIS

To me---old age is
fifteen years older than I am.

BERNARD MANNES BARUCH

Old age is when
you know all the answers ... but nobody asks you any questions.

LAWRENCE J. PETER

I'm 65 and I guess
that puts me in with the geriatrics, but if there were fifteen months in every
year, I'd only be 52.

JAMES THURBER

Old friends are
best. King James used to call for his old shoes; they were the easiest for his
feet.

WAYNEBOOTH

[When David
Ben-Gurion came out of retirement for the ninth time, he was asked by an
American why he bothered to retire]

"It's like those
going out of business' signs you see along Seventh Avenue---a chance to unload
stock he doesn't want, hire a new staff, and make a different contract with the
union. "

DAVID BEN-GURION

Life is 10percent
what you make it and 90percent how you take it.

IRVING BERLIN

My grandfather would
look through the obituary columns and say to me, "Strange, isn't it, how
everybody seems to die in alphabetical order."

JACKIE VERNON

By the time a man
gets to greener pastures he can't climb the fence.

FRANK DICKSON

I'm not getting old.
My mirror is just getting wrinkled.

ANONYMOUS

Old age: When
actions creak louder than words.

DANA ROBBINS

When a man's
friends begin to compliment him about looking younger, he may be sure that they
think he is growing old.

WASHINGTON IRVING

I will not make age
an issue ... I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent’s
youth and inexperience.

RONALD REAGAN

At age 73
concerning his 56-year-old opponent, Walter Mondale

October 21, 1984, debate

SERIOUS
QUOTATIONS ABOUT AGING

We believe that
aging is not a reason for despair but a basis for hope, not a slow decaying but
a gradual maturing, not a fate to be undergone but a chance to be embraced.

HENRY
J. M. NOUWEN & WALTER GAFFNEY

Aging: The Fulfilment of Life

New
York: Image Book, Doubleday, 1976, p.20

Preparation for
old age should begin not later than one's teens. A life which is empty of
purpose until 65 will not suddenly become filled on retirement.

ARTHUR MORGAN

People are
anxious to save up financial means for old age; they should also be anxious to
prepare a spiritual means for old age.... Wisdom, maturity, tranquility do not
come all of a sudden when we retire.

ABRAHAM JOSHUA HERSCHEL

If a thing is old,
it is a sign that it was fit to live. Old families, old customs, old styles
survive because they are fit to survive. The guarantee of continuity is quality.
Submerge the good in a flood of the new, and the good will come back to join the
good which the new brings with it. Old-fashioned hospitality, old-fashioned
politics, old-fashioned honor in business had qualities of survival. These will
come back.

ANONYMOUS

What if someone
had decided that Pablo Picasso, Pablo Casals, or Michelangelo, still producing
in their 80s and 90s, had "no future " when they became 70 years old?

MARGRET C. ELWELL

Age should not have
its face lifted, but it should rather teach the world to admire wrinkles as the
etchings of experience and the firm line of character.

RALPH BARTON PERRY

The cure for age
is interest and enthusiasm and work.... Life's evening will take its character
from the day which has preceded it. You will always find joy in the evening ...
if you've spent the day well.

GEORGE MATHESON

Old age is just
as important and meaningful apart of God's perfect will as is youth. God is
every bit as interested in the old as the young.

J. O. SANDERS

Dr. E. Stanley Jones
suggested the following steps for continuing growth in old age:

7. Keep laying up as the years come and
go to "the good store" of which Jesus spoke. This "good store" is the depository
of every thought, motive, action, attitude which we drop into the subconscious
mind. It can be the deep subsoil into which we can strike our roots in old age
and blossom at the end like a night-blooming cereus.

E. STANLEY JONES,

Growing Spiritually

Nashville: Abington, 1953, p.313

Your manner of
life now is already determining your life in those years of old age and
retirement, without your realizing it even, and perhaps without your giving
enough thought to it. One must therefore prepare oneself for retirement.

PAUL TOURNIER,

Learn to Grow

Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1972, p.13

In order to make
a success of old age, one must begin it earlier, and not try to postpone it as
long as possible. In the middle of life we must stop to think, to organize our
existence with an eye to a still distant future, instead of allowing ourselves
to be entirely sucked into the professional and social whirl. It is then that it
is important to give place little by little to less external activities, less
technical and more cultural, which will survive the moment of retirement.

PAUL TOURNIER,

Learn to Grow

Louisville: Westminster/ John Knox Press, 1972, p.12

It is only logical
that if God's will is good and acceptable and perfect (Romans 12:2), then
complaining about it or rebelling against it is out. If God's will is
acceptable, it must be accepted.

J. O. SANDERS

ON WAKING IN PRISON

O God, early in the morning I cry to You

Help me to pray

And to concentrate my thoughts on You:

I cannot do this alone. In me there is
darkness,

But with You there is light;

I am lonely, but You do not leave me;

I am feeble in heart, but with You there
is help;

I am restless, but with You there is
peace.

In me there is bitterness, but with You
there is patience;

I do not understand Your ways,

But You know the way for me.

DIETRICH BONHOEFFER (1906-1945),

while awaiting execution in a Nazi prison

DEATH

You haven't lost
anything when you know where it is. Death can hide but not divide.

VANCE HAVNER

I'm not afraid to
die. I'm looking forward to it. I know the Lord has His arms wrapped around this
big sparrow.

ETHEL WATERS

Life is a hard
fight, a struggle, a wrestling with the principle of evil, hand to hand, foot to
foot. Every inch of the way is disputed. The night is given us to take breath,
to pray, to drink deep at the fountain of power. The day, to use the strength
which has been given us, to go forth to work with it till the evening.

FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

Since General
MacArthur made his famous statement, "Old soldiers never die, they just fade
away, " interesting quotations have been proposed. Such as,

Old postmen never die, they just lose
their Zip.

Old scoutmasters never die, they just
smell that way.

Old deans never die, they just lose their
faculties.

Old doctors never die, they just lose
their patience.

ANONYMOUS

Every man must do
two things alone; he must do his own believing and his own dying.

MARTIN LUTHER

The measure of a
life, after all, is not its duration but its donation.

CORRIE TEN BOOM

If you draw near
the end in somber circumstances, remember that as a faithful child of God you
await promotion. Who knows but
that the brightest jewel in your crown is for that lonely afternoon and night
when all seemed lost but you believed anyway. Remember John the Baptist in
prison and John on Patmos and countless millions who have been on that road
before you. Remember Mr. Fearing in Bunyan's immortal Pilgrim's Progress, who
dreaded Jordan all his days. But when he reached it, the water was a record low,
and he got across

"not much above
wet-shod. " The last chapter in life can be the best.

VANCE HAVNER

As a well-spent
day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death.

LEONARDO DA VINCI

Lord Jesus Christ,

You are the only
source of health for the living, and You promise eternal life to the dying. I
entrust myself to Your holy will. If You wish me to stay longer in this world, I
pray that You will heal me of my present sickness. If You wish me to leave this
world, I readily lay aside this mortal body, in the sure hope of receiving an
immortal body which shall enjoy everlasting health. I ask only that You relieve
me of pain, that whether I live or die, I may rest peaceful and contented.

ERASMUS (1469-1536)

Book of Prayers

What is dying?
Just what it is to put off a garment. For the body is about the soul as a
garment; and after laying this aside for a short time by means of death, we
shall resume it again with more splendor.

ST. JOHN CHRYSOSTOM (347-407),

Early Christian saint

Death always waits.
The door of the hearse is never closed.

JOSEPH BAYLY

God buries His
workmen but carries on His work.

CHARLES WESLEY

Because I could not stop for death

He kindly stopped for me;

The carriage held but just ourselves

And immortality.

EMILY ELIZABETH DICKINSON

Edythe
Draper, Draper's Book of Quotations,

Wheaton, IL:Tyndale House, 1990, 127.

Christ taught an
astonishing thing about physical death: not merely that it is an experience
robbed of its terror but that as an experience it does not exist at all. To
"sleep in Christ," like one that wraps the drapery of his couch about him, and
lies down to pleasant dreams.

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT

When Michelangelo,
already well along in years, was discussing life with an old friend, the latter
commented, "Yes, after such a good life, it's hard to look death in the eye."
"Not at all!" contradicted Michelangelo. "Since life was such a pleasure,
death coming from the same great Source cannot displease us."

TEMMLER WERKE

I don't know what
your destiny will be, but one thing I know, the only ones among you who will be
really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve.

ALBERT SCHWEITZER

Don't allow
yourself to feel old; don't give up your interest in life; cultivate a hobby;
have a game now and then with your grandchildren, or someone else's; don't think
about the end---God has lovingly planned that, and you will be as unaware of
your passing out as you were of your coming.

F. B. MEYER

THE OLD PLAYER

Call him not old, whose visionary brain

Holds o’er the past its undivided reign.

For him in vain the envious seasons roll

Who bears eternal summer in his soul.

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

People are reluctant
to talk about old age and death because they are afraid of emotion, and they
willingly avoid the things they feel most emotional about, though these are the
very things they most need to talk about.

PAUL TOURNIER

Learn to Grow Old

Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1972, p.217

Christian faith
does not involve repressing one's anxiety in order to appear strong. On the
contrary, it means recognizing one's weakness, accepting the inward truth about
oneself, confessing one's anxiety, and still to believe, that is to say that the
Christian puts his trust not in his own strength, but in the grace of God.

PAUL TOURNIER

Learn to Grow Old

Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1972, p.222

I will say with
Lorenzo de Medici that those who do not hope for another life are always dead to
this one.

GOETHE

Of dying C. S.
Lewis said, "You needn't worry about not feeling brave. Our Lord didn't. ...
Remember the scene in Gethsemane. How thankful I am that when God became man, He
did not choose to become a man of iron nerves; that would not have helped
weaklings like you and me nearly so much. "

THE QUOTABLE LEWIS

Letters of C. S. Lewis, 1953

J. I. Packer
reminds us, "Dying well is one of the good works to which Christians are called,
and He will enable us who serve Him, to die well." We can finish with grace.
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